1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to apparatus for various embodiments of sectionalized trash receptacles all specifically adapted to facilitate initial separation of solid waste at its point of generation into separate recyclable components.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The proper disposal of commercial and residential trash is becoming increasingly problematical for many sections of the country and is reaching crisis proportions in some sections.
Specifically, for many years, solid waste (trash) has been collected from all generating sites, i.e. individual residences and commercial establishments, existing throughout a number of regions, such as separate municipalities, and then buried en mass in a land fill site. Hundreds of thousands of tons of waste are disposed in this fashion yearly. Now, many existing land fill sites are reaching their maximum capacity. Moreover, very few sites exist that are environmentally and politically suitable for use as new land fill sites. Consequently, the amount of available, i.e. unused, land fill space existing across the country is rapidly diminishing. In addition, increased use of other forms of trash disposal, such as ocean dumping and/or incineration, are expensive, potentially hazardous, and often take years to implement. Consequently, these other forms are meeting with increased opposition and thus can not be looked upon to provide any additional capacity for trash disposal. Therefore, in the absence of suitable alternatives and to allow existing land fill sites to accept additional trash for as long an interval of time as possible, management personnel at many land fill sites are severely limiting the number of municipalities each land fill site will serve and the amount of trash that each municipality can bury in the land fill site.
One way to extend land fill capacity out over time is to collect those components of solid waste that are easily amenable to being recycled and keep them out of the waste stream that is destined for burial at a land fill. These recyclable materials typically include newspaper, high grade paper, cardboard, glass containers and aluminum cans. Once collected these components can be transported to a recycling plant for re-manufacture and eventual reuse thereby effectively removing the recyclable materials from the waste stream. Approximately, as reported in "Should New Jersey Have a Bottle Bill?", The Asbury Park Press, June 15, 1987, page A21 newspapers, corrugated and other paper represent approximately 47% of the solid waste stream, yard waste accounts for approximately 10-15%, glass comprises approximately 6-7%, aluminum represents approximately 1%, plastic accounts for approximately 7%, food scraps accounts for approximately 8% and some 16% of the solid waste stream consists of other materials.
It has been estimated that recycling can reduce solid waste destined for burial at a land fill site by a substantial amount and thereby effectively extend the life of existing land fill sites for a number of years. This period of time should, it is hoped, be sufficient to enable society to develop alternate mechanisms for solid waste disposal.
Recycling is not a new idea and, in fact, has been used, at least on a voluntary basis, for quite a number of years. Unfortunately, voluntary compliance has not reached a level sufficient to have an appreciable impact on reducing the size of the solid waste stream. Various states are now considering the use of mandatory recycling and one state, New Jersey, has enacted a mandatory recycling act. Through this act, New Jersey counties, in conjunction with their member municipalities, are required to develop plans, collect and recycle three materials, plus leaves, from their solid waste streams. The goal of the act is to reduce the volume of solid waste by approximately 25% in an 18 month period starting from the date mandatory recycling begins in New Jersey.
For mandatory recycling to work effectively, every solid waste generator, whether it is an individual in a residence or an individual in a commercial or industrial establishment, must separate solid waste as soon as it is generated. This means that the individual must separate recyclable materials (components) of trash he or she generates, such as newspaper, cardboard, glass and aluminum, from non-recyclable trash, such as food scraps, for separate storage and subsequent transport to an appropriate recycling center.
Generally, to institute recycling at a location, a separate waste container is designated to hold a particular recyclable component. For example, one container can be labelled for storing aluminum only, another for storing cardboard only, a third for storing high grade paper only and a fourth for storing glass only. In this manner, the contents of each trash receptacle can be collected for shipment to a particular recycling center separately from other recyclable materials.
Various arrangements exist in the art to secure multiple trash receptacles in a common area. These are typified by the arrangements shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,288,305 (issued to F. C. Bryant et al on Nov. 29, 1966); 3,105,594 (issued to R. S. Ewers on Oct. 1, 1963); 3,065,858 (issued to R. H. Furr on Nov. 27, 1962 and United States design patent 214,644 (issued to D. B. Maris on July 8, 1969). Unfortunately, all of these arrangements possess common drawbacks when used in recycling multiple recyclable components occurring in a solid waste stream. First, these prior art arrangements are all bulky and hence occupy a relatively large amount of floor space. Second and more important, the size of each trash receptacle used in each of these arrangements is approximately the same. Hence, since the amount of each recyclable component accumulates at a different rate from that of the others, each receptacle in these prior art arrangements will likely fill at a different rate than that of the other receptacle(s). For example, since aluminum constitutes only 1% of the waste stream while paper products account for 47%, the receptacle designated to store aluminum will remain relatively empty while the receptacle designated to store paper products will fill and need to be emptied several times. Generally, all the receptacles in any such arrangement are emptied at once. To ensure that solid waste does not overflow any receptacle, the rate at which any of these prior art arrangements will need to be emptied by a laborer will usually be dictated by the fill rate of the container designated for the recyclable component that occupies the largest share of the solid waste stream. Therefore, most of the receptacles will be emptied before they are full and hence at an excessive rate. This, in turn, wastes labor.
Different waste generators generally produce waste streams with correspondingly different amounts of each recyclable component and even the same generator produces a waste stream that typically has differing amounts of recyclable components at different times. Inasmuch as the capacity of each receptacle contained in the prior art arrangements can not be sized to coincide with volumetric percentages of each recyclable component in the waste stream that are, in fact, and/or ar expected to be produced by each generator, these prior art arrangements are not ideally suited for use with efforts aimed at recycling multiple recyclable components
Therefore, a need exists in the art for a non-bulky trash receptacle that can separately store different types of solid waste wherein the storage capacity allocated to each type of waste can be readily changed as necessary to coincide with the amount of that type of waste that is expected to be and/or is being generated. Such a receptacle would advantageously be particularly suited for use in separately storing each different recyclable component occurring in a solid waste stream and would minimize space and labor requirements.